Wedding tips for the bride | Planning a perfect wedding for YOU

A summer wedding, a winter wedding, destination wedding, huge wedding, intimate wedding?!

Learning from my brides I think the most important thing to remember is to do what YOU want to do.

Sit down with your soon to be hubby and talk about the 5 most important things for you guys on YOUR big day. It can be so hard getting wrapped up in impressing this person or that, keeping Grandma happy or having the floral arrangement that your Mom wants, but ultimately it is YOUR day and if you are happy everyone else will be as well.

So excited one of my brides from this summer wanted to share how they made their day perfect.

“As we began dreaming about our wedding, the thing that my husband Nathan and I were most excited about for that day was that it was a chance for us to really share our story- our story both as individuals as well as our journey as a couple and how our love came to be.

For us, our shared faith is foundational to our love story and having both walked down painful and broken paths to get to this moment in our lives, we saw our wedding as an opportunity to tell the story of the restoration, redemption, hope and joy that we had experience by God’s grace.

Whatever the foundation of your relationship might be, your wedding is an opportunity to share with friends, family and, let’s face it, the world (because with social media so many people have an opportunity to see/hear about your wedding!), what it is that has led you both to the commitment of marriage.

My encouragement to future brides is to take time to think through each element of your wedding day as an opportunity to give family and friends insight into what makes your love story unique. Whether this is through your save the date and invitations, music, decorations, food, pictures, favors, etc. Your story can shine through any and all elements of your wedding day.

For my husband and me, our story was weaved throughout each decision we made surrounding our big day. We decided that an intimate gathering at a house we rented for the weekend would allow our closest family and friends to really get to know each other. We chose to only invite those who really knew us well (and not feel guilty about not inviting those who didn’t!). We decided to have a couple who had mentored us throughout our relationship be the ones to actually marry us,as they knew our story best. We chose to serve bbq for dinner and had guests choose from either “Texas” or “Kansas” style sauce as a way to play up our separate Texas and Kansas roots!

We also decided ahead of time that we weren’t going to do any of the typical wedding traditions “just because,” but rather chose the ones that spoke most to our own personalities and story as a couple. We had cheesecake in lieu of an elaborate wedding cake, had a non-traditional “laying of hands” style prayer with all of our wedding guests in the middle of the wedding ceremony, and chose to spend time together the morning of our wedding as a couple (as opposed to not seeing each other before either the ceremony or the “first look”).

Ultimately, it’s YOUR story and YOUR day and while there will be many around you who have thoughts and opinions about what this can or should look like, what is most important is honoring the journey that has brought you to this joyous day of committing your life to one another- and what better way to do that than to share the story with those you love most?”